A Lady of ExpectationsJack Lester seeks the perfect bride--one who is attractive and kind, but who also loves him in spite of his wealth. Which is why he keeps this trifling detail hidden. But when Sophie Winterton enters his life, believing he must marry into wealth to run his family's estate, how will he convince her that she is the woman he desires--and that he can be the husband she deserves?Secrets of a CourtesanEve Nightingale thought she had put her past as mistress to the Duke of Welburn behind her. But when the handsome duke strolls into her small village, she finds it hard to keep her secrets concealed...and to keep her heart from stirring for him once again.How to Woo a SpinsterStill unmarried at twenty-eight, Lady Emmaline Daughtry has resigned herself to spinsterhood. Then Captain John Alistair arrives at her door--the very image of the perfect lover of her most private dreams. But can a...

Penelope Adair, wife and partner of amateur sleuth Barnaby Adair, is so hugely pregnant she cannot even waddle. When Barnaby is summoned to assist Inspector Stokes of Scotland Yard in investigating the violent murder of a gentleman at a house party, Penelope, frustrated that she cannot participate, insists that she and Griselda, Stokes’s wife, be kept informed of their husbands’ discoveries.Yet what Barnaby and Stokes uncover only leads to more questions. The murdered gentleman had been thrown out of the house party days before, so why had he returned? And how and why did he come to have the fabulous Finsbury diamond necklace in his pocket, much to Lord Finsbury’s consternation? Most peculiar of all, why had the murderer left the necklace, worth a stupendous fortune, on the body?The conundrums compound as our intrepid investigators attempt to make sense of this baffling case. Meanwhile, the threat of scandal grows ever more tangible for all those attending the house party – and the stakes are highest for Lord Finsbury’s daughter and the gentleman who has spent the last decade resurrecting his family fortune so he can aspire to her hand. Working parallel to Barnaby and Stokes, the would-be lovers hunt for a path through the maze of contradictory facts to expose the murderer, disperse the pall of scandal, and claim the love and the shared life they crave.